Luck o' the Irish
by RnbwXSprinkles
Summary: A Marauder's St. Patty's Day. Written of the St. Patty's Day contest for
1. Leprechauns and Shamrocks

Sirius woke up instantly. St. Patrick's Day had come. One of the few holidays that he was not expected to go home for.

"James!" Sirius attempted to poke said friends to wakefulness, "Oy! James!" James moaned.

"Ugh, what is it now Mum? For the last time, green, leprechaun-patterned knickers are just plain creepy!" Sirius recoiled slightly. Then, a grin split his face.

"Oh, but Jamsie-boy! Are you sure you won't try the ones with the shamrocks, then? Mummy wants you to look festive for St. Patty's day!" Sirius gushed, in an attempted high-pitched, motherly voice. Of course, seeing as Sirius happened to have a rather deeper voice, even than the other three, this didn't quite work. James, rolled over quickly, instantly awake.

"Sirius!" he roared, slamming his pillow down on Sirius' head, "You sick freak! I can't believe you just pretended to be my mother!" Sirius laughed hysterically. Just then, their racket was interrupted by a dull thump followed by a squeak. They two friends looked at each other before craning to look over Sirius' bed to the one beyond it.

"Er, Wormtail? You okay?" They heard a snore. Sirius bounced himself over his bed, James right behind him, though preferring to settle himself on the edge of the mattress. Sirius nudged Wormtail with his foot, giving the lump of a boy an incredulous look.

"I can't believe it," Sirius said huskily, holding in laughter, "He's asleep!" James snorted, setting Sirius off as he got off the floor and sat next to James on the bed. James paused, glancing up.

"DUCK!" He shouted, pointing as a rather heavy book came flying towards them.

"QUACK!" Sirius shouted, ducking down. Both watched the book whoosh past, then quickly looked over to the source. There, on the bed beyond Peter's, a disgruntled, tired looking Remus could be seen glaring out from under a pillow.

"James!" Sirius exclaimed, in mock shock and horror, "I can't believe you called our dear friend, Remus, a duck." As he said this last bit, Sirius walked over to Remus, again mocking concern. Sirius reached over to place his arm over Remus' shoulders.

"One more step, Black." Remus snarled. Sirius paused, mid-step, arm in the air. James and Remus laughed.

"You should've seen your face!" Remus said breathlessly, "It was almost as priceless as when you woke up from that dream when you snogged the squid!" From the floor, Peter gave a loud guffaw. James and Sirius stared. Remus made his way, over, sitting on Peter's bed and looking down.

"Isn't he sleeping?"

"Yes," Sirius and James replied in unison. The three looked at each other.

"Let's wake him up," Remus grinned cynically. James raised his eyebrows. Sirius jumped up, beaming.

"I have an idea!" Sirius rushed out of the room, leaving a slightly scared silence in his wake.

"James?" Remus said after a long stretch of confused silence.

"Hmm?"

"I blame you."

"What? YOU said 'Let's wake him up' and did the evil, creepy, doggy/ wolf grin."

Remus did THE grin, "So?" James opened his mouth to reply, but Sirius burst back into the room holding Filch's cat.

"Oh, Merlin." Remus said, looking half-exasperated, half-enthusiastic. James started to chuckle, seeing exactly where Sirius was going. Mrs. Norris began struggling harder.

"Ready. Aim. Fire!" Sirius shouted, letting Mrs. Norris go, howling and clawing her way through the air right onto Peter. Peter yelped.

"Arg! Cat! CAT!" He scrambled up onto his bed, as far away from Mrs. Norris as possible who, pausing to hiss at them all, stick her tail in the air and daintily left the room.

"Good morning, Peter!" Remus said brightly, slinging his arm over Peter's shoulders. Peter mumbled something under his breath.

"Well," Sirius sighed dramatically, "This has been fun, but I'm starving. I say we go down for some breakfast."

"Yeah me too, coming Moony? Wormtail?" Both nodded and followed James. James was pulling Peter along almost as if to make sure he was awake. Sirius however, stopped, spotting something green peeking out from under James' bed. Reaching under, he pulled it out.

"Jaaaames! Guess what 'Mummy' found!" Sirius repeated his earlier high-pitched voice, though this time adding a sing-song tone to it, "Green, leprechaun-patterned knickers for my little Jamsie-boy!" Sirius waved said knickers in James' face before quickly running for his life to the common room. James ran down the stairs screaming at Sirius to come back, Peter being dragged along for the ride.

Remus was left behind, more than slightly confused. After a moment's silence, he too went down stairs.

"Are you two done fight- Ah!" Sirius, having just aimed a green streak of wandlight at James; and James, having ducked out of the way, looked over at Remus' shout.

Remus, it seemed had been hit with Sirius' spell instead of James. A large cloud of green and gold smoke cleared and then...

"Merlin's Green Wand!" Remus slapped his now extremely small hands over his mouth, eyes widening. The other two stared in shock. Remus seemed horrified, "Is that-" he paused to cough, "Is that my voice?" He squeaked.

"Aye! And no wonder, laddie! Why don't ye take a look at the mirror!" Sirius smirked, imitating Remus' new Irish accent wonderfully. Remus fairly ran to the mirror. He was greeted not by his own reflection, but by a small being with blue-green eyes, freckles, a fair bit of bright red hair, and wearing green.

"What? How can it be? A- a leprechaun! I be a leprechaun from the fair Emerald Isle!" Remus looked horrified at the thought.

"Well, mate. We'd better be off to the Great Hall." James said, him and Sirius taking Remus' arms and leading him to breakfast, fairly picking the small being from the ground. In all the excitement and the prospect of immense humiliation on Remus' part, one can hardly blame the boys for forgetting all about Peter whom had in fact, returned to dreaming on the couch.

However, if the boys had looked back, they would have known that Remus' situation wasn't the only thing resulting from the incident. Peter, who had just caught the very edge of Remus' cloud had acquired half of a green eyebrow. But something else strange was happening. As time passed, the left half of Peter's hair fell out as he sprouted (from the newly bald spots) a rather fetching patch of clovers, shamrocks, and little yellow flowers.

* * *

"No! Let go! Please!" Remus begged in his newfound voice, "Not the Great Hall! Not where everyone can see!"

"Ah, show some Irish pride!" James poked the leprechaun's ribs, taking his turn at an Irish accent. Remus merely whimpered. Sirius kicked open one door, James opening the other in the same way. Remus flushed in humiliation and James and Sirius jauntily jigged down the space between the Ravenclaw and Gryffindor tables, belting out "Danny Boy".

There was a shocked silence before the Great Hall burst out into laughter, talking, and of course pointing. Remus glared and scowled all the way to the other end of the table where they sat down. Remus, of course, had to stand on the seat to even reach his dish. A Ravenclaw boy leaned across the aisle, still chuckling from the show.

"Oy! Sirius, James! What's with the fairy?" But before either of them could even open their mouths, Remus turned around and beat them to it.

"Leprechaun!" he said, indignantly, arms outspread, "Lep-re-chaun!" Remus turned around once again and asked Frank Longbottom politely for some porridge. Frank, looking slightly reluctant, obliged and gingerly handed Remus the porridge, thinking that so far it looked like this year's St. Patrick's day would be very interesting.


	2. Snakes I Think

The boys laughed through the day, excelling visibly at all classes, and relishing in the attention earned by Remus. Even Remus seemed to be enjoying the attention in good humor, appreciating the spell work and the all around comedy of his predicament.

However, nothing at all would prepare the boys for the jubilation that was Professor McGonagall's face at the sight of Remus' new look.

"Wha-! Black! Potter! Lupin! What is this? Is that even you, Lupin?" Professor McGonagall nearly stuttered in shock. Remus grinned cheekily.

"Aye, professor. That I am, that I am." The boys walked past, sitting in the front row of desks, leaving the professor gawking in awe and confusion.

The boys spent a good lesson, trying to change their desks to various things, though McGonagall of course set some guidelines. The transfiguration had to be the size of the desk or larger, and could not be made of wood. She even went so far as to make it a competition of some sorts, and would be judging the best transfiguration at the end.

The trio laughed and teased as each transfigured their desks into various things, trying to decide which they would use to show off. They took great and obvious pleasure at the frequent looks of disbelief thrown at them from McGonagall. And the day seemed to be getting better and better, none of the teachers seemed to have even thought of giving them detention, all seemed preoccupied by the fact that Remus was now a mythical creature.

Sirius, of course, had to cause the first action of extreme chaos that day. He had decided to try transfiguring his desk into an extremely large potion's cauldron. However, he happened to be laughing very hard during the attempt, causing an odd lapse in pronunciation. With a bang, his desk promptly turned into a gigantic pile of amazingly oversized, green salamanders.

"Ew!" a girl from Slytherin cried, "It looks like a pile of slime!"

"Or snakes." Another Slytherin boy observed, stepping closer.

"You're all wrong," Sirius said calmly, "It looks like Snivellus' hair." James sniggered.

From the back of the class a voice shouted, "Reptile Infestation! Reptile Infestation!" As if this was some sort of secret signal and the strange reptiles were part of some demonic cult, the salamanders suddenly slithered everywhere. With an unexpected quickness for such lumbering beasts, the salamanders all managed to escape the room and were now loose among the castle. Of course, McGonagall immediately turned on Sirius.

"Black! What on Earth do you think you were doing?"

"It was only an accident, ma'am. You can hardly blame me for that, and I promise you, Professor, it will never happen again."

"Accident!" Professor McGonagall's nose flared," And I suppose it's an accident the Lupin's a LEPRECHAUN!" She screeched the last word, pointing a shaking finger furiously at Remus who admittedly shrank back subtly. Sirius stared, mouth agape.

"How'd you know it was me?"

"That doesn't matter! Detention! For all of you!"

"All of us!" James jumped in.

"Yes, all of you! Even if Black here did the actual action, I'm sure the two of you were involved just as much. I'll be in touch with you about the time and location of your _separate_ detentions." The boys left hurriedly. As soon as they were out of earshot, they started laughing.

"The look on her face!" Sirius exclaimed, pure glee lighting up his features. Suddenly, Remus stopped walking.

"Where be Wormtail?" Remus squeaked. The three looked at each other, then, without a word, they rushed to the common room.

* * *

Lily walked into the common room with the rest of the Gryffindor girls in her year. She heard a rather lot of giggling from the front of the group and worked her way forward to see what the fuss was about. She hardly had to ask, however, for the cause was extraordinarily obvious. The group of girls had paused to stare at an oddly decorated lump. 

I front of her, Lily couldn't help but immediately recognize a sleeping Peter Pettigrew. However, it was Peter as she had never seen him before.

* * *

When the three Marauders walked in, they were greeted by a crowd of people who, for once, had their backs turned and were gathered around something other than the famous (or infamous) trio. The group worked their way up to the front of the crowd and stopped abruptly, shocked, at the sight that greeted them. There, on the couch lay Peter whose head had been half covered in what was unmistakably shamrocks and small yellow flowers in place of his hair. Upon closer observation, they also discovered that half of Peter's eyebrow (on the same side of his head as the shamrocks) was now colored a rather fetching green. Peter himself, of course, remained sleeping, blissfully unaware of the crowd gathering around him. 

The stunned silence and whispers throughout the common room, however, were pierced by a sharp –pop-. James and Sirius looked around to see that Remus had changed back and was looking rather happy at the improvement as well as the switch of attention from him to the oblivious Peter.

"Well, look at that!" Sirius exclaimed as they walked up to the common room to gather their books for the upcoming classes (they had decided to leave poor Peter behind), "It does wear off after all!"

"Luck of the Irish, eh Remus?" James teased, grinning broadly.

Remus stared at him for a moment, blinking in surprise, "I'm... not Irish."


End file.
